Apple
struck a chord with competitors and consumers alike when it launched the
first iPhone. The device wasn't perfect, but it sold in droves and
each successive version of the iPhone has sold exceptionally well.
The device is one of the most popular smartphones on the American
market, despite only having one carrier.

The popularity of the
iPhone and the tendency of customers to actually use the smartphone
for its intended purpose means that owners tend to consumer more data
bandwidth than users of other devices. In fact, AT&T has
threatened in the past to charge
iPhone users who consume more data than it thinks they
should more money, despite the fact that iPhone data plans are said
to be unlimited.

AT&T may blame the huge number of iPhones
that it sells for its data woes, but the company recognizes how
important the iPhone is to its bottom line. The company has pledged
to improve
its network and in Q1 Apple reported sales
of the iPhone doubled so the number of iPhones on the AT&T
network will only increase.

Consumer
Reports has
published the results
of research that it commissioned from a company called
Validas. Validas is a web firm that analyses the bills of wireless
users that the customers willingly upload and the data is used for
research when the providers won’t give first party
numbers.

According to the data Validas provided Consumer
Reports,
the average iPhone user consumes 273MB of data per month. By
comparison, the average Blackberry user only consumes 54MB of data
each month. Users of other smartphones consume an average of 150MB
per month. The data also showed that 12% of iPhone users gobble up
500MB per month of bandwidth and the biggest consumers of bandwidth
using the iPhone use over 1GB of data per month.

Consumer
Reports reached
out to AT&T for first-party numbers and were turned down. An AT&T
spokesperson said, "For competitive reasons, we do not disclose
the usage of our iPhone customers."

The
data analyzed by Validas included 757 iPhone users, 783 Blackberry
users, and in total looked at 14,000 wireless users.

"I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For [Paramount] to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks!" -- Movie Director Michael Bay